Would you like to be able to schedule reports in SCE? August 13, 2008

Have you ever wanted to get a report sent by mail or saved to a file share on a schedule basis? In System Center Operations Manager, you have this function directly in the System Center Operations Manager Console but for System Center Essentials, this feature was not included (because the limitation in SQL Express that is included in Essentials 2007).

So – how can we fix this? Since Essentials use SQL 2005 Reporting engine, we can configure this from the Report Manager (Note that this will not work if you use SQL 2005 Express or SQL 2005 Workgroup since they don’t have this feature). The example below we will configure so you get the Update Deployment report in your inbox every morning. Note that this is just an example, you can schedule every report available in Essentials.

First we need to verify that the Reporting server is configured to send report via mail.

Start the Reporting Services Configuration from the start menu

At the Instance selection dialog box, click to connect to your local server

Select the E-mail node and enter a e-mail address (this is the from address) and the name of your mail server, click apply and exit

Reporting Manager will now start and you can see all available reports that are installed (number of reports will vary depending on what Management packs you have installed)

Click Microsoft.SystemCenter.Essentials.Report.Library and select the Microsoft.SystemCenter.Essentials.Report.UpdateDeployment report (the one without the rpdl extension)

When the report is shown, click on the subscription link and then New subscription

In the Report Delivery option and Subscription Processing option add:Delivered by = E-mail (if e-mail is not available to select, you have missed the first 4 steps). Note! If you add a “external” e-mail address you need to make sure the reporting server are permitted to “relay” mail traffic.Render format = in this example we use Web ArchiveSelect scheduling = Select the time and how often you want the reportIn the Report Parameter Values = Unselect default and select only the type of status you want to see (in my example I only select Not installed, Downloaded and failed). You also need to specify a group of computers you want to run this report again’s (in my example I select All Servers)

When you done your selections, click ok to save. You will receive the report in your inbox